Data I collected from the initial prototype (preceding this one in the video) but didn't end up in this video (but will the next): Input air temp: ~50 C (from a vacuum cleaner motor as air pump which generated a lot of heat) Ground temp: 23.5 C (~1.1m max depth, sandy above sandstone, shaded) Ambient air temp: ~30 C (both inside house and outside because bad windows and no insulation) Flow rate: 2 l/s Test time: 8.5 hours Output air temp from system: 24 C I was largely expecting the ground heat capacity to saturate at some point, but neither it or the output came hardly at all above the starting point, even running it at such high input temps for essentially the whole day. With regards to humidifying the air, even if 100% of the dumped excess heat went into vaporising the water, the result would still only be a couple percent increase in absolute humidity, and though I still need to properly test that aspect, I feel like passing warm moist air through cool water should actually dehumidify it, as that's how that is often done industrially, rather than the opposite. But remains to be seen. A closed loop system is also an option, but does introduce other potential issues. Table salt should keep the water sterile in a saturated solution and won't gas off like other options. Even extremophile organisms can't survive that level of salinity.
It's two years later any improvement or breakthroughs. Would it be possible to use rainwater we already collect and use for daily use that way the water isn't stagnant and is replenished regularly. would a fish tank bubbler work better cooling smaller bubbles
To cool the 1728 cubic foot cube volume from 30c to 23.5c you need to remove 304.1 btu (assuming bone dry air). Assuming the 30C dry air and 23.5c dry air didn`t mix (which they would), your 2L per second air flow rate would do the job in around 6 hours 48 minutes, assuming the cube and water didnt gain or lose any additional heat in that time (which they would) :)
Where to start. A small motor just driving a fan would be more energy efficient and remove the complexity of the bellows. More importantly...an open loop like this is not used in "modern" air circulation systems for several important reasons. Algae growth in the tank and pipes can off gas methane and moisture in the lines can grow god know what bacteria--both of which can kill you. A closed loop system with a water to air energy exchange, (a fancy way of saying radiator) with a fan will still take advantage of the Geo-thermal cooling without exposing you to off gassing and bacteria. It also prevents the water from evaporating. You are also going to saturate the area around your 5 gallon water bottle with heat very quickly and there goes your cooling. You need to spread that heat loading over a much larger area. There are no shortcuts in physics. Even open source physics =)
These were also my main concerns with the approach, but it does work fairly well in practice. I'd much rather use a fan due to ease of material availability, but they can't overcome the backpressure of bubbling the air through the water. I saturate the water with table salt, which doesn't off gas and keeps the water completely sterile. Bubbling warm air through cool water acts as a dehumidifier, not the opposite, so there's no water vapour to accumulate in the downstream pipes and promote biological growth. Could maybe overflow if it's left unchecked for too long in humid conditions and too much water drops into the bottle. The first prototype of this I used a vacuum cleaner motor as air mover, which was putting out 55C air, which even after eight hours of running the system, in suboptimal conditions (shallow sand) the out air (and therefore ground) temp didn't come up by more than half a degree above baseline.
@@OpenSourceLowTech Sorry but salt water is not sterile--even in higher concentrations. Saline is sterile because it uses sterilized water and is kept in a sterilized sealed container. Google "is salt water sterile?". If you don't believe Google, have a look at your nearest ocean, brine pond, or salt water aquarium. As for condensation. You may not see it on the upper end of your vertical piping because of gravity but there WILL be condensation. It will just collect lower in the pipe where you can't see it. By definition, if your system is drawing heat from the room your cooling then you are creating a temperature differential and wherever there is a temperature differential there will be condensation. As for the size of your system and thermal saturation. I don't recall your mentioning the actual temperature differential you achieve. IIRC you are cooling a 1728 cubic foot space. You don't mention ambient or average ambient, and specifically how much you lower the temperature, or for how long you can maintain that differential. Your 5 gallon water container is buried fairly shallow by geothermal standards, and is in a single container--not spread out over a larger area / land mass. There are quite a few calculators online for calculating how much land mass you would need for systems of differing sizes--these typically are rated by the ton. Anecdotes are nice. Facts and data are better. I mean no disrespect, and I am not being critical or trolling you. I think the work you are doing is important and that geothermal is a wonderful solution to heating and cooling--one a lot more people should be using. My concern is that incorrectly designed systems, or systems not sized properly, or open loop systems that can make people sick, will have the opposite effect and actually discourage the general public from exploring greener technologies. You seem like a good person. You clearly are creative and willing to put in the labor. My hope is that you do more research and make sure the system is safe before you make these videos. Explore moving the water (in a closed loop for safety) rather than pushing air through the water in an open loop. There are tons of inexpensive water pumps--a lot of them are 12V and designed to work off of solar. Use an energy exchange--aka radiator--which are also fairly inexpensive, equipped with one or more small fans. Systems like this have already been used safely for a very long time. They are very energy efficient, low maintenance, easy to install--well except for all that digging =), and most importantly, safe.
@@OpenSourceLowTech You might use a mixture of borax and citric acid powder mix to keep the water sterile. Regardless of the approach, you need to change the heat exchange medium from time to time. For easy water changes the tank could have a third pipe that leads to an access point. Second, the water bottle sits on gravel and drain from an overflow to the gravel. From time to time you just pour in new mix and it pushes older mix out to the gravel. And you need a vastly larger tank to adequately cool 12 foot cubed. AC's are measured in mass units called tons. You need upwards of 1,000 pounds (.5 ton) for that much volume.
Like Gene so politely said, this bullshit will not work. It's a stupid hippy pipe dream. Not deep weigh to reach stable ground temps. Wrong materials. Just too much wrong to list. He basically built a big bong and hopes it will cool/heat this jail cell which it won't affect the interior temp by more than a couple of degrees. Nothing wrong with experimenting but don't push it like gospel when it's Stupidity on steroids. 😂
It would really help me out if you could leave a comment with where you saw the thumbnail for this video, and if your subscribed +/ belled if you got a notification, and where. Thanks guys.
I saw the notification on computer and clicked on it, also received it on phone, I'm subscribed + notifications bell "all", I also see the video in the subscriptions tab, everything works as expected for me
Your channel isn't broken, but your audio is. You either need a better mic or a louder voice! Looking back through your videos, I can remember getting notifications for most of them. I don't think there's anything up with the algorithm, the problem is maybe with the apes that are trying to understand the algorithm... 🙃 All the best
Yes, it works! A couple of things jump out at me that you may not have considered ... You have a water source with air bubbling through it ..... How do you stop the nasties like Legionnaire killing people? Now I have your attention it is only fair to say the chances may be low, but they are there and it has happened before (hence the name)! Your air valves do not look like they would be effective with low pressure differentials. Did you think of having a ping pong ball in a tube so that when it falls to the bottom it blocks the air intake? When the pressure outside the intake exceeds the pressure on the compression side of the valve the air would simply blow the ping pong ball up out of the way only for it to fall over the hole when the flow stops. An easy and cheap one way valve for air! A Ball Bearing would work well in a similar valve for water or oil! You could do a similar thing by having an external inlet vent leading down to the top of a gravel filled hole (or bury a long pipe in the dirt) ...... from your thermal mass (gravel) bottom you then feed into your room pod or whatever closed space you want to cool. The only thing you need then is a vent high up to let the hot air expell due to air pressure and drag cool air in from the thermal mass! Good luck with your channel!
Yeah the water definitely needs to be kept sterile. A saturated table salt solution seems to work best in terms of ergonomics, availability, killing everything, and not gassing off. The flap valves aren't the most effective option, but are the easiest to make and integrate. Ping pong ball checks would probably work better, and not be prohibitive, but the others seems just a bit better in a cost benefit sense. A pipe run rather than the water is the more standard approach to ground mass cooling, and works well, but needs a lot more pipe and ground area. The main point of this one is that you only really need to dig one straight hole.
@@OpenSourceLowTech another benefit of using a (high) concentration of salt, is that it will possibly give you some moisture removal from the air as well adding to the thermal efficiency. Good luck with this.
@@evil17 Quite possibly, humidity effects are definitely something needs in situ testing. There is the danger that it would add moisture to the air, since it's coming in direct contact with the water, but I think it should do the opposite, as that's generally what happens when you drop the dew point..
This was dope. Thank you for explaining how it works! Once I understood the concept, I couldn't help but think about how similar this is to some of the bongs I made when I was younger lolololol
I think you made a very good air cooler that ANYONE could make almost anywhere with very little investment. Necessity is the key word. Not technical luxury. Cheers, mate. You have another subscriber for life.
Good to see it working again. I got the notification when you uploaded, but haven't watched until today. It's been set to all notification for years, but this was the first that actually showed up in my notification list.
i saw it in my pc yt page notifications first, but also got it as a mobile notification and on my subscriptions page, seems to all be working now! glad to see you back, really enjoy all your content
First of all sorry for my english. Have you thought about doing the same but replacing the plastic bottle with a clay pot? Here in Spain, a water container called "botijo" a jug has traditionally been used and it cools the water by allowing the water to perspire because it is made of clay and by evaporating water through its surface, the temperature of the water in the container is lowered. So I wonder if the functioning of the jug could be adapted to this system by burying the clay pot. We would have to think of a system to fill the jar with water, but I don't think it would be much of a problem using the pipes themselves. Congratulations on your channel, it seems to me the very essence of humanity, making simple systems available to people that can be a great improvement.
That sounds good to me also. Thanks. It may seem farfetched for me to still enjoy reading and hearing about low tech innovation when I'm getting too old to do much about it, especially a lot of digging - but maybe it's giving me hope for the future of mankind even when I'm gone, etc. At least I was able to buy a 2-storey 1900 Queen Anne and fix it up and plant a whole lot of trees when I first retired almost 2 decades ago. Concentrating on passive systems first pays off too. Even when it hits 90 degrees Farenheit outdoors, I don't need to run so much as a single fan. It'll still be between 70 and 75 indoors. When the outside gets even hotter, I just gradually step up the fan situation while living downstairs and encouraging enough hot air to flow upstairs. We had a couple of official heat domes this summer but I only had to run the downstairs window AC the greater part of less than 5 days total. Never at night. And I've got enough solar to run the window AC on that if we have grid down. So I hope I've done my part.
Thanks, been watching your videos on cooling methods with interest. There's also a, so far not yet tested, version of this with a slight pressure increase to further cool the air via adiabatic expansion. Would be higher power required for less flow, but could be useful for situations where the ground temp isn't usefully cool, or there's not the option to dig a 2m deep hole.
I love these Open Source Low Tech designs. And love the idea of cooling with the earth. I just worry about Legionnaires' Disease when condensation in the pipe turns to mildew. Perhaps it's dry enough in Arizona so that isn't a problem.
The tank can be saturated with table salt to keep it sterile in a way that won't gas off over time. The rest of the system shouldn't really get any water buildup, but should be kept an eye on, yes.
I regularly check in to my "subscriptions" page to see what's newly uploaded, and this video showed up like normal, and I clicked through to watch. Last vid I remember seeing is the wifi dish extender video. I personally don't turn on notifications on for any channels, I don't need any more distracting pings on my phone, but I do regularly come back to check subscription page.
Good to see that the Arcosanti project is still doing things on the ground. :D Also, i like the use of pvc for the piping, as the chlorine leaching from the plastic will help keep the water sterile. :D
First one of your videos to show up in my notification feed. Good plan keeping it simple, just remember as heat rises, cold ' falls ' refer to frost creeping out to the floor in grocery stores in really hot summers.
I never heard of that before. Learn something new all the time! That's one reason I enjoy mostly lurking in what really amounts to engineering circles. Some people don't have that kind of degree, but that doesn't mean they're not whip smart. I'm a student of human nature basically, and we never cease to impress me.
First geothermal might or might not be the best but it is an interesting idea for this scale. Second, here are some ideas of improvments: Remove the water. Use multiple thin metal rods of about 1.5m long x 3mm diameter. Coil one extremity of each rod into a flat spiral and sharpen the other one into a nail. Nail them into the ground forming a line. Only the spiral must stick out of the ground, facing each other. Encase the spirals in a pipe, sealed around the rods and blow air in it. Now also remove the pump and just use a small fan the size of the pipe. You have no pressure gradient to overcome here since there is no water. Also hot air accumulate at the top of the room so thats where you want your intake. All of that should help you improve a much simpler and better result at the cost of a little bit of metal. You can multiply the rods or increase their length for depth and coil exchange surface with the air. You could put more complexe metal structures in the ground for more exchange surface with the ground... It could really be a thing when the air/ground temperature delta is big.
A more conventional heat exchanger would also work, but they usually require more extensive excavation to allow for more surface area and access to mass.
I'm subscribed, no notifications set up, but saw the thumbnail while scrolling my subscription feed. Regarding the actual video, I would like to mention that as the air gets pulled through the water, it is going to warm the water. Unavoidable in any situation, but a plastic jug is going to insulate it and make it lose efficiency faster. A more conductive metal bucket that can shed that heat to the earth faster may make it work better.
Metal would be better, yes, but I did a rough calculation of the thermal throuput of the polycarb, given its R value, thickness, and surface area, and the max wattage out through it should be greater than what's coming in with the air. And then the heat carrying capacity of the ground should be essentially infinite. Metal containers are trickier to get, especially ones that seal, and would need to be very rust proof being filled with saturated brine for years on end.
I do have some test data on this system, which will presumably be in the next video. Basically, even pumping 55C air into this for eight hours straight, the water temp only came up by half a degree above the ground temp.
So happy to see this project as I’ve been mulling over how to harness the plentiful thermal energy here in AZ. Rob! Not sure if you remember me, Chris, though we hung out a few years back talking music, CNC machines, alternative energy research and more. I recall spending an evening over at your place in Arcosanti to check out the projects you were working on at the time. Thanks for sharing this research and I’ll be doing a deep dive on your channel now before reaching out to see about how we can collaborate working on our many shared interests. Great work!
Rob put me (Daniel) up at Arcosanti in 2016 and helped with what I was working on there, and shot this video for me after I'd left around their continued work on the design. But not sure he'll see your comment.
I got a notification. My subscription 'bell' for your channel has always been set to "all". I saw this video months ago. Can't remember if I got a notification then. I might have been looking through my sub list and saw you had posted. It's been a while.
Seeing the air being bubbled through the water made me think of one thing: Legionair's Disease! I hope that I'm wrong about that. Being that I'm 77 years old, some of my responses are the result of a lifetime of experiences leading to wisdom and other times it's just senility. Your guess is as good as mine.😊
Nice idea. Missing is an indicator for water level, as it will drop over time due to evaporation into the air being drawn up into the room, and a means to refill the water reservoir (could be done through the hot pipe side of the plumbing with a Y connection.
Yeah a water level would be handy, tho suspect that in a lot of conditions it should condense water out of the air and potentially eventually overflow. I've been making them with standard garden hose attachments, so you can just unclip the in and outputs, put in a dipstick, and refill if needed with water and or salt.
FYI, just commenting for algos. I don’t know if I got notified, once I saw your other recent update(s) in my notifications in my subscriptions and main feed I went to check your channel and saw this one. Glad I checked because this is a project I hadn’t seen before
Got a notification and the vid was also in my subscription feed. The audio is very quiet, and it is difficult to understand what being said when listening on a smart phone. It might be possible to fix this in editing by adjusting the gain on the audio track.
Yeah it needs a bit of an edit in general, I'll probably incorporate this footage into the eventual full build tutorial, once the prototype is up and running.
@@OpenSourceLowTech Fantastic. I was just worried your average view time might be taking a hit as a result. But there again, not everyone cares about ticking every single one of CZcams's boxes (their alleged criteria for algorithmically favouring a video) and that's a good thing. Enjoyed the preview, looking forward to the final version!
Upvoted.. appeared in my suggestions. Good luck friend. Edited: I'm now not sure if you appeared in my suggestions or my subscribed list, just realised I was subbed already.
It seems that you may have dug too close to the concrete pad and this may cause it to crack. If your going to fill the hole with gravel, kindly put a screen ( landscape screen) around it, to stop the dirt under the house from moving.
Bingo! I've been looking at all sort of different rotary to linear converters for a 50' pond solar powered pump and this is a unique idea. czcams.com/video/DG6own141z0/video.html is a well known PVC one-way check valve that is probably better. This pump is nice because it sort of obviates the need for some sort of lubricant.
Very interesting indeed. This video certainly would be of great help should it be remade in a tutorial of step by step on how DIY and perhaps any new added innovations as well. This cooling system seems beneficial for off grid cooling by solar power.
I have one concern: How long before that plastic bottle starts breaking down and releasing micro-plastics into the soil, etc.? Is there a more environment friendly alternative?
The water cooler bottles are usually polycarbonate, which is essentially indestructible and should start breaking down approximately never. In other parts of the world the 20 litre bottles tend to just be PET or equivalent, which isn't quite as hard wearing but should still last a good long while. And considering that in most instances it'll be this or landfill..
It showed up in my list of subscribed new videos. I don't choose to received notifications n any of my subscribed channels.As a side note, even with volume qt maximum on youtube and my computer, I could barely hear the first 3 1/2 minutes. Thanks.
Like all your videos, but other then the turbines where you show the output, this type of videos of cooling/heating, we also want to see the results, i mean, if that works is not hard to measure the temperature of the out pipe that goes to the house and showing a clip of it.
I think a brtter option is a swamp cooler where you use the coold watter from the swamp cooler in a radiator in the house. I have tested a swamp cooler where in 35 C° input air the water gets down to 18 C°. This does use more power. The two fans would probably use around 150 watts of power but with a very large cooling capacity.
@@OpenSourceLowTech So mi idea is to use the water from the swamp cooler in a heat exchanger. The reson being the fact that swamp coolers can be unhealthy due to mold and other stuff. Also when a swamp cooler in high humidity it will still make the water several degrees colder so it would be a little efective regardless of humidity. The system would have a regular swamp cooler running on a roof per say, and another pump circulating the watrer in a system that has a ratiator in the house.
@@OpenSourceLowTech Use the water vapor that is already in the air and drop it to dewpoint underground. With air and ground temperatures of 30c and 23.5c respectively, you`ll need the air in the cube above 68% RH.
- Do you have a complete demo with delta T measurements? - How would you scale this for a bigger space? - Insulating the cold air pipe isn't necessary ?
- I haven't got around to doing a proper results video of this yet, but the initial prototype in Western Australia had s l/s of 55C air (using a vacuum cleaner air mover which is not a good option other than for stress testing the system) going into 23.5C ground temp (shallower and sandier than ideal) and didn't come up ore than 0.5C above that after 8 hours of solid use. - Depends, but mostly bigger air mover for more volume flow. It'd probably have to be fairly big before you needed a bigger water mass / container. - Hose pipe insulates reasonably well, but more lagging is more effective, yes.
I have a question, if yall have a second to answer it . Would this design work in more temperate, less arid climates? I understand that evaporative cooling systems like this dont work so well in humid climates, though im wondering if somehow because of the geothermal effect, that gets accounted for.
This isn't an evaporative process, in fact it would be an issue if the water did gas off over time. The cooling effect is just from transferring the ground temperature to the water, as in most locations it should be cooler than summer days and warmer than winter nights.
Does anyone suppose this device might pump the cooler air high enough that it could enter the structure at a height of about 5' rather than at floor level? If so, it would be more effective since the air inside the interior cabin would naturally fall downward? It's my whole body I'd want to cool off, not just my feet.
Two things; ! Just allow convection to do all the work for free. 2. No need to cool a body of water when the cool ground is all you need. But, yes, looks like you had some fun with this one.
A thermosiphon could potentially have been useful here, but unfortunately the ground is the cold bit, so a convection loop won't occur. Maybe if it was used for warming in winter, but there's better ways of doing that.
I got some provisional data from the initial testing a while back, basically after eight hours straight of pumping 55C air in (heated by the vacuum cleaner pump I was using as a prototype) it didn't come up by more than half a degree above the local ground temp of 23.5C, and that was in a fairly non ideal situation of dry sand at less than a meter depth. I really need to get back to this tech tho and flesh it out properly..
I agree with the sentiment but I don’t think that simple tech is the solution to living independent of government, it’s good for living independent of energy companies, water companies, that sort of stuff but the simple tech is not gonna stop the government collecting your bins ever week haha.
I looked into various options, best one seems to be just saturate with table salt. Doesn't gas off, non toxic, cheap, and nothing should survive in it.
So the returning air is at a much higher humidity due to passing thru the water in the jug. I doubt this would provide much BTU cooling hence the need to place directly under and against a tree for shade. The principle is fairly good but the execution leaves something to be desired.
desert ground is not 55 degrees at 1 meter, it's more like 75 degrees. Ground temperature is only lower than 60 degrees if it's wet due to evaporative cooling effect. It gets to about 65 degrees down 50 feet deep... good DIY project though...
Data I collected from the initial prototype (preceding this one in the video) but didn't end up in this video (but will the next):
Input air temp: ~50 C (from a vacuum cleaner motor as air pump which generated a lot of heat)
Ground temp: 23.5 C (~1.1m max depth, sandy above sandstone, shaded)
Ambient air temp: ~30 C (both inside house and outside because bad windows and no insulation)
Flow rate: 2 l/s
Test time: 8.5 hours
Output air temp from system: 24 C
I was largely expecting the ground heat capacity to saturate at some point, but neither it or the output came hardly at all above the starting point, even running it at such high input temps for essentially the whole day.
With regards to humidifying the air, even if 100% of the dumped excess heat went into vaporising the water, the result would still only be a couple percent increase in absolute humidity, and though I still need to properly test that aspect, I feel like passing warm moist air through cool water should actually dehumidify it, as that's how that is often done industrially, rather than the opposite. But remains to be seen.
A closed loop system is also an option, but does introduce other potential issues.
Table salt should keep the water sterile in a saturated solution and won't gas off like other options. Even extremophile organisms can't survive that level of salinity.
It's two years later any improvement or breakthroughs. Would it be possible to use rainwater we already collect and use for daily use that way the water isn't stagnant and is replenished regularly. would a fish tank bubbler work better cooling smaller bubbles
To cool the 1728 cubic foot cube volume from 30c to 23.5c you need to remove 304.1 btu (assuming bone dry air). Assuming the 30C dry air and 23.5c dry air didn`t mix (which they would), your 2L per second air flow rate would do the job in around 6 hours 48 minutes, assuming the cube and water didnt gain or lose any additional heat in that time (which they would) :)
Where to start. A small motor just driving a fan would be more energy efficient and remove the complexity of the bellows. More importantly...an open loop like this is not used in "modern" air circulation systems for several important reasons. Algae growth in the tank and pipes can off gas methane and moisture in the lines can grow god know what bacteria--both of which can kill you. A closed loop system with a water to air energy exchange, (a fancy way of saying radiator) with a fan will still take advantage of the Geo-thermal cooling without exposing you to off gassing and bacteria. It also prevents the water from evaporating.
You are also going to saturate the area around your 5 gallon water bottle with heat very quickly and there goes your cooling. You need to spread that heat loading over a much larger area. There are no shortcuts in physics. Even open source physics =)
These were also my main concerns with the approach, but it does work fairly well in practice.
I'd much rather use a fan due to ease of material availability, but they can't overcome the backpressure of bubbling the air through the water.
I saturate the water with table salt, which doesn't off gas and keeps the water completely sterile.
Bubbling warm air through cool water acts as a dehumidifier, not the opposite, so there's no water vapour to accumulate in the downstream pipes and promote biological growth. Could maybe overflow if it's left unchecked for too long in humid conditions and too much water drops into the bottle.
The first prototype of this I used a vacuum cleaner motor as air mover, which was putting out 55C air, which even after eight hours of running the system, in suboptimal conditions (shallow sand) the out air (and therefore ground) temp didn't come up by more than half a degree above baseline.
@@OpenSourceLowTech Sorry but salt water is not sterile--even in higher concentrations. Saline is sterile because it uses sterilized water and is kept in a sterilized sealed container. Google "is salt water sterile?". If you don't believe Google, have a look at your nearest ocean, brine pond, or salt water aquarium. As for condensation. You may not see it on the upper end of your vertical piping because of gravity but there WILL be condensation. It will just collect lower in the pipe where you can't see it. By definition, if your system is drawing heat from the room your cooling then you are creating a temperature differential and wherever there is a temperature differential there will be condensation.
As for the size of your system and thermal saturation. I don't recall your mentioning the actual temperature differential you achieve. IIRC you are cooling a 1728 cubic foot space. You don't mention ambient or average ambient, and specifically how much you lower the temperature, or for how long you can maintain that differential. Your 5 gallon water container is buried fairly shallow by geothermal standards, and is in a single container--not spread out over a larger area / land mass. There are quite a few calculators online for calculating how much land mass you would need for systems of differing sizes--these typically are rated by the ton. Anecdotes are nice. Facts and data are better.
I mean no disrespect, and I am not being critical or trolling you. I think the work you are doing is important and that geothermal is a wonderful solution to heating and cooling--one a lot more people should be using. My concern is that incorrectly designed systems, or systems not sized properly, or open loop systems that can make people sick, will have the opposite effect and actually discourage the general public from exploring greener technologies. You seem like a good person. You clearly are creative and willing to put in the labor. My hope is that you do more research and make sure the system is safe before you make these videos.
Explore moving the water (in a closed loop for safety) rather than pushing air through the water in an open loop. There are tons of inexpensive water pumps--a lot of them are 12V and designed to work off of solar. Use an energy exchange--aka radiator--which are also fairly inexpensive, equipped with one or more small fans. Systems like this have already been used safely for a very long time. They are very energy efficient, low maintenance, easy to install--well except for all that digging =), and most importantly, safe.
@@OpenSourceLowTech You might use a mixture of borax and citric acid powder mix to keep the water sterile. Regardless of the approach, you need to change the heat exchange medium from time to time. For easy water changes the tank could have a third pipe that leads to an access point. Second, the water bottle sits on gravel and drain from an overflow to the gravel. From time to time you just pour in new mix and it pushes older mix out to the gravel. And you need a vastly larger tank to adequately cool 12 foot cubed. AC's are measured in mass units called tons. You need upwards of 1,000 pounds (.5 ton) for that much volume.
Seems like h2o2 would keep the water clean
Like Gene so politely said, this bullshit will not work. It's a stupid hippy pipe dream. Not deep weigh to reach stable ground temps. Wrong materials. Just too much wrong to list.
He basically built a big bong and hopes it will cool/heat this jail cell which it won't affect the interior temp by more than a couple of degrees.
Nothing wrong with experimenting but don't push it like gospel when it's Stupidity on steroids. 😂
It would really help me out if you could leave a comment with where you saw the thumbnail for this video, and if your subscribed +/ belled if you got a notification, and where.
Thanks guys.
I saw the notification on computer and clicked on it, also received it on phone, I'm subscribed + notifications bell "all", I also see the video in the subscriptions tab, everything works as expected for me
The video poped up in my abo feed.
ive been subbed for ages, came up on my main home feed
Popped up in my feed. Good to see you again!
It was on my subscription page this morning.
Very nice! Inspiring for sure. Would be nice to see a short video of it in action with some measurements. Thanks for sharing!
This reminds me of the 'open source ecology' project. You're doing absolutely awesome work that deserves to be known widely.
It just appeared in my suggestion list (25 minutes after upload) , so they've must fixed algorithm . Hopefully , it will continue to work .
Your channel isn't broken, but your audio is. You either need a better mic or a louder voice! Looking back through your videos, I can remember getting notifications for most of them. I don't think there's anything up with the algorithm, the problem is maybe with the apes that are trying to understand the algorithm... 🙃
All the best
Yep, great content, but please raise the volume in future videos! When an add starts it's so loud because your video has very little volume.
Yes, it works!
A couple of things jump out at me that you may not have considered ...
You have a water source with air bubbling through it ..... How do you stop the nasties like Legionnaire killing people?
Now I have your attention it is only fair to say the chances may be low, but they are there and it has happened before (hence the name)!
Your air valves do not look like they would be effective with low pressure differentials. Did you think of having a ping pong ball in a tube so that when it falls to the bottom it blocks the air intake? When the pressure outside the intake exceeds the pressure on the compression side of the valve the air would simply blow the ping pong ball up out of the way only for it to fall over the hole when the flow stops. An easy and cheap one way valve for air!
A Ball Bearing would work well in a similar valve for water or oil!
You could do a similar thing by having an external inlet vent leading down to the top of a gravel filled hole (or bury a long pipe in the dirt) ...... from your thermal mass (gravel) bottom you then feed into your room pod or whatever closed space you want to cool. The only thing you need then is a vent high up to let the hot air expell due to air pressure and drag cool air in from the thermal mass!
Good luck with your channel!
Yeah the water definitely needs to be kept sterile. A saturated table salt solution seems to work best in terms of ergonomics, availability, killing everything, and not gassing off.
The flap valves aren't the most effective option, but are the easiest to make and integrate. Ping pong ball checks would probably work better, and not be prohibitive, but the others seems just a bit better in a cost benefit sense.
A pipe run rather than the water is the more standard approach to ground mass cooling, and works well, but needs a lot more pipe and ground area. The main point of this one is that you only really need to dig one straight hole.
@@OpenSourceLowTech another benefit of using a (high) concentration of salt, is that it will possibly give you some moisture removal from the air as well adding to the thermal efficiency. Good luck with this.
@@evil17 Quite possibly, humidity effects are definitely something needs in situ testing. There is the danger that it would add moisture to the air, since it's coming in direct contact with the water, but I think it should do the opposite, as that's generally what happens when you drop the dew point..
Only thing wrong with this video is, um, math, science and reality🤦♂️
@@OpenSourceLowTechExcellent idea. Thank you
I have been subscribed for ages, & this is the 1st vid from you in my feed in a very long time.
This was dope. Thank you for explaining how it works! Once I understood the concept, I couldn't help but think about how similar this is to some of the bongs I made when I was younger lolololol
It's essentially the same principle, yes.
I think you made a very good air cooler that ANYONE could make almost anywhere with very little investment. Necessity is the key word. Not technical luxury. Cheers, mate. You have another subscriber for life.
Good to see it working again. I got the notification when you uploaded, but haven't watched until today. It's been set to all notification for years, but this was the first that actually showed up in my notification list.
i saw it in my pc yt page notifications first, but also got it as a mobile notification and on my subscriptions page, seems to all be working now! glad to see you back, really enjoy all your content
First of all sorry for my english. Have you thought about doing the same but replacing the plastic bottle with a clay pot? Here in Spain, a water container called "botijo" a jug has traditionally been used and it cools the water by allowing the water to perspire because it is made of clay and by evaporating water through its surface, the temperature of the water in the container is lowered. So I wonder if the functioning of the jug could be adapted to this system by burying the clay pot. We would have to think of a system to fill the jar with water, but I don't think it would be much of a problem using the pipes themselves. Congratulations on your channel, it seems to me the very essence of humanity, making simple systems available to people that can be a great improvement.
That sounds good to me also. Thanks. It may seem farfetched for me to still enjoy reading and hearing about low tech innovation when I'm getting too old to do much about it, especially a lot of digging - but maybe it's giving me hope for the future of mankind even when I'm gone, etc. At least I was able to buy a 2-storey 1900 Queen Anne and fix it up and plant a whole lot of trees when I first retired almost 2 decades ago. Concentrating on passive systems first pays off too. Even when it hits 90 degrees Farenheit outdoors, I don't need to run so much as a single fan. It'll still be between 70 and 75 indoors. When the outside gets even hotter, I just gradually step up the fan situation while living downstairs and encouraging enough hot air to flow upstairs. We had a couple of official heat domes this summer but I only had to run the downstairs window AC the greater part of less than 5 days total. Never at night. And I've got enough solar to run the window AC on that if we have grid down. So I hope I've done my part.
Nice idea! I think you've really done well here.
Thanks, been watching your videos on cooling methods with interest.
There's also a, so far not yet tested, version of this with a slight pressure increase to further cool the air via adiabatic expansion. Would be higher power required for less flow, but could be useful for situations where the ground temp isn't usefully cool, or there's not the option to dig a 2m deep hole.
Blooming COSMIC!! This was my first thought of the day and BOOM!..you're in my feed. Thank you. 🤩💥🧠🙏✨💖
I love these Open Source Low Tech designs. And love the idea of cooling with the earth. I just worry about Legionnaires' Disease when condensation in the pipe turns to mildew. Perhaps it's dry enough in Arizona so that isn't a problem.
The tank can be saturated with table salt to keep it sterile in a way that won't gas off over time. The rest of the system shouldn't really get any water buildup, but should be kept an eye on, yes.
The dry air will dry the water out and EMPTY the water in a week.
I regularly check in to my "subscriptions" page to see what's newly uploaded, and this video showed up like normal, and I clicked through to watch. Last vid I remember seeing is the wifi dish extender video. I personally don't turn on notifications on for any channels, I don't need any more distracting pings on my phone, but I do regularly come back to check subscription page.
Good to see that the Arcosanti project is still doing things on the ground. :D
Also, i like the use of pvc for the piping, as the chlorine leaching from the plastic will help keep the water sterile. :D
First one of your videos to show up in my notification feed. Good plan keeping it simple, just remember as heat rises, cold ' falls ' refer to frost creeping out to the floor in grocery stores in really hot summers.
I never heard of that before. Learn something new all the time! That's one reason I enjoy mostly lurking in what really amounts to engineering circles. Some people don't have that kind of degree, but that doesn't mean they're not whip smart. I'm a student of human nature basically, and we never cease to impress me.
First geothermal might or might not be the best but it is an interesting idea for this scale.
Second, here are some ideas of improvments:
Remove the water. Use multiple thin metal rods of about 1.5m long x 3mm diameter. Coil one extremity of each rod into a flat spiral and sharpen the other one into a nail. Nail them into the ground forming a line. Only the spiral must stick out of the ground, facing each other. Encase the spirals in a pipe, sealed around the rods and blow air in it.
Now also remove the pump and just use a small fan the size of the pipe. You have no pressure gradient to overcome here since there is no water.
Also hot air accumulate at the top of the room so thats where you want your intake.
All of that should help you improve a much simpler and better result at the cost of a little bit of metal. You can multiply the rods or increase their length for depth and coil exchange surface with the air. You could put more complexe metal structures in the ground for more exchange surface with the ground...
It could really be a thing when the air/ground temperature delta is big.
A more conventional heat exchanger would also work, but they usually require more extensive excavation to allow for more surface area and access to mass.
Your channel seems to be working just fine for me. Great to see you again!
That's crazy I wondered why I'd stopped seeing videos from you. I got excited about the first hoverboard generator vid then nothing until this week.
Very steampunk. That's the knowledge that will be needed to rebuild after all of the destruction
I don’t remember subscribing to you so perhaps your channel maybe broken. That being said, some great content that I plan on continuing to watch :)
I'm subscribed, no notifications set up, but saw the thumbnail while scrolling my subscription feed.
Regarding the actual video, I would like to mention that as the air gets pulled through the water, it is going to warm the water. Unavoidable in any situation, but a plastic jug is going to insulate it and make it lose efficiency faster. A more conductive metal bucket that can shed that heat to the earth faster may make it work better.
Metal would be better, yes, but I did a rough calculation of the thermal throuput of the polycarb, given its R value, thickness, and surface area, and the max wattage out through it should be greater than what's coming in with the air. And then the heat carrying capacity of the ground should be essentially infinite.
Metal containers are trickier to get, especially ones that seal, and would need to be very rust proof being filled with saturated brine for years on end.
I do have some test data on this system, which will presumably be in the next video. Basically, even pumping 55C air into this for eight hours straight, the water temp only came up by half a degree above the ground temp.
@@OpenSourceLowTech All fair points. I guess it would be a negligent return for a lot more hassle.
TY :D
I've sent this vid to some friends that have been working on heat pump designs for the Scottish climate. :D
Cheers. I'm currently in Scotland if they want a hand.
@@OpenSourceLowTech They're in Shetland, so if you're on the mainland, you won't be anywhere near them. :D
Ah, yeah, Edinburgh. What are they working on?
@@OpenSourceLowTech Just emailed you. :D
@@OpenSourceLowTech Heat pumps for their houses in rural Scotland. :D
Also, there's a good acoustic music session in Sandy Bell's on Friday nights. :D
Also got the notification, looking forward to more vids , god bless
So happy to see this project as I’ve been mulling over how to harness the plentiful thermal energy here in AZ.
Rob! Not sure if you remember me, Chris, though we hung out a few years back talking music, CNC machines, alternative energy research and more. I recall spending an evening over at your place in Arcosanti to check out the projects you were working on at the time.
Thanks for sharing this research and I’ll be doing a deep dive on your channel now before reaching out to see about how we can collaborate working on our many shared interests. Great work!
Rob put me (Daniel) up at Arcosanti in 2016 and helped with what I was working on there, and shot this video for me after I'd left around their continued work on the design.
But not sure he'll see your comment.
What are the results of this system? Does it in fact cool on a hot day?
Did subscribe a year ago, maybe...
I got the notification on my phone like most of the subscribed channels I have.
Keep on the good work.
I got a notification. My subscription 'bell' for your channel has always been set to "all". I saw this video months ago. Can't remember if I got a notification then. I might have been looking through my sub list and saw you had posted. It's been a while.
Seeing the air being bubbled through the water made me think of one thing: Legionair's Disease!
I hope that I'm wrong about that. Being that I'm 77 years old, some of my responses are the result of a lifetime of experiences leading to wisdom and other times it's just senility.
Your guess is as good as mine.😊
Relevant info in the pinned comment.
Great to have you back - saw it in my notifications bc I'm subscribed (with bell)
Got the notification on my phone since I'm a subscriber. All good ! Great video
Nice idea. Missing is an indicator for water level, as it will drop over time due to evaporation into the air being drawn up into the room, and a means to refill the water reservoir (could be done through the hot pipe side of the plumbing with a Y connection.
Yeah a water level would be handy, tho suspect that in a lot of conditions it should condense water out of the air and potentially eventually overflow.
I've been making them with standard garden hose attachments, so you can just unclip the in and outputs, put in a dipstick, and refill if needed with water and or salt.
FYI, just commenting for algos. I don’t know if I got notified, once I saw your other recent update(s) in my notifications in my subscriptions and main feed I went to check your channel and saw this one. Glad I checked because this is a project I hadn’t seen before
Hi your volume is so low I can barely hear with full on. turn your end all the way up i can turn it down but can't turn it up if its not there
Subscribed but I never turn on notifications. Your video showed up in my subscription feed; first one in a long time!
Bro you're alive! I'm happy!
Appeared on top of my feed,I'm a subscriber
subscribed. no bell, just green dot in my list of "favorites". look forward to working with you one day, TURTLE AIRSHIPS.
Great work. I hope a following video about performance and numbers.
Will be.
Zip ties are guaranteed to let you down get by stainless steel Marine clamps and bulk very worth it.
Quite possibly, yeah.
Got a notification and the vid was also in my subscription feed. The audio is very quiet, and it is difficult to understand what being said when listening on a smart phone. It might be possible to fix this in editing by adjusting the gain on the audio track.
Yeah it needs a bit of an edit in general, I'll probably incorporate this footage into the eventual full build tutorial, once the prototype is up and running.
@@OpenSourceLowTech Fantastic. I was just worried your average view time might be taking a hit as a result. But there again, not everyone cares about ticking every single one of CZcams's boxes (their alleged criteria for algorithmically favouring a video) and that's a good thing. Enjoyed the preview, looking forward to the final version!
How much of the cooling is due to evaporation? I think the water level is gonna go down pretty quickly.
Upvoted.. appeared in my suggestions.
Good luck friend.
Edited:
I'm now not sure if you appeared in my suggestions or my subscribed list, just realised I was subbed already.
It seems that you may have dug too close to the concrete pad and this may cause it to crack. If your going to fill the hole with gravel, kindly put a screen ( landscape screen) around it, to stop the dirt under the house from moving.
Channel working, but volume waaaaay too low.
Turn it up 😏
My volume is wide open & all I can hear is mumbling... can't hear anything he's saying... unwatchable...
Hearing aides
Same here, on my phone, volume too low compared to the ad just before it. Hopefully he will repost with higher volume.
Louder sign language
I'm subscribed and saw this video in the subscription feed.
this channel is easily the coolest on youtube. no pun intended.
Thanks!
yes got your notification . Love your channel. thanks . Mate invest in a Microphone, SOUND real bad !!!!
I've not been seeing any notifications of your videos at all until today.
Hi I barely heard you but did you say what temps you were getting in the structure vs outdoor temps?
I am subscribed and belled, this showed up in my subscription feed as it should :)
Awesome concept.
I've come back to this video to try this diaphragm design out as a simple pond aerator
Yeah that could work.
Bingo! I've been looking at all sort of different rotary to linear converters for a 50' pond solar powered pump and this is a unique idea. czcams.com/video/DG6own141z0/video.html is a well known PVC one-way check valve that is probably better.
This pump is nice because it sort of obviates the need for some sort of lubricant.
Subscribed and it was in my subscription feed this now
A 12 foot cube but the depth is in meters......... This is America, dam it! Give me some french fries!!
Very interesting indeed. This video certainly would be of great help should it be remade in a tutorial of step by step on how DIY and perhaps any new added innovations as well. This cooling system seems beneficial for off grid cooling by solar power.
Would not the water begin to growing mold etc that you would not want pumped into the air in the building?
So, after a couple years , how well does this work?
I second this, also curious
Do you have second video showing how well it works?
I have one concern: How long before that plastic bottle starts breaking down and releasing micro-plastics into the soil, etc.? Is there a more environment friendly alternative?
The water cooler bottles are usually polycarbonate, which is essentially indestructible and should start breaking down approximately never.
In other parts of the world the 20 litre bottles tend to just be PET or equivalent, which isn't quite as hard wearing but should still last a good long while.
And considering that in most instances it'll be this or landfill..
i am subscribed since long time but have no notifications activated, however i saw the video in the feed
G'day,
I saw the thumbnail on my YT front page. I even received a notification from the little bell icon thingy (happens for about 1/4 of my subs).
What is the purpose of the intake/out take being so small?
I've been thinking of freezing a bunch of 55 gallon drums in winter and running a coil around them for cooling.
It showed up in my list of subscribed new videos. I don't choose to received notifications n any of my subscribed channels.As a side note, even with volume qt maximum on youtube and my computer, I could barely hear the first 3 1/2 minutes. Thanks.
I saw this video in my subscriptions.
Like all your videos, but other then the turbines where you show the output, this type of videos of cooling/heating, we also want to see the results, i mean, if that works is not hard to measure the temperature of the out pipe that goes to the house and showing a clip of it.
Than
I saw it in my "feed" after subscribing a month or so ago
Hey I got a notification for this!
I think a brtter option is a swamp cooler where you use the coold watter from the swamp cooler in a radiator in the house. I have tested a swamp cooler where in 35 C° input air the water gets down to 18 C°. This does use more power. The two fans would probably use around 150 watts of power but with a very large cooling capacity.
Swamp coolers are fairly common and often effective, tho they do go through a lot of water and don't work in humidity.
@@OpenSourceLowTech So mi idea is to use the water from the swamp cooler in a heat exchanger. The reson being the fact that swamp coolers can be unhealthy due to mold and other stuff. Also when a swamp cooler in high humidity it will still make the water several degrees colder so it would be a little efective regardless of humidity. The system would have a regular swamp cooler running on a roof per say, and another pump circulating the watrer in a system that has a ratiator in the house.
Could be a bit tricky as the water needs to evaporate into air for the cooling effect.
@@OpenSourceLowTech
Use the water vapor that is already in the air and drop it to dewpoint underground. With air and ground temperatures of 30c and 23.5c respectively, you`ll need the air in the cube above 68% RH.
@@JohnGuest45 that does make sense
Hi! Subscribed a long time ago and got notification in my feed.
I really couldn't hear the video but it seemed like an interesting topic.
- Do you have a complete demo with delta T measurements?
- How would you scale this for a bigger space?
- Insulating the cold air pipe isn't necessary ?
- I haven't got around to doing a proper results video of this yet, but the initial prototype in Western Australia had s l/s of 55C air (using a vacuum cleaner air mover which is not a good option other than for stress testing the system) going into 23.5C ground temp (shallower and sandier than ideal) and didn't come up ore than 0.5C above that after 8 hours of solid use.
- Depends, but mostly bigger air mover for more volume flow. It'd probably have to be fairly big before you needed a bigger water mass / container.
- Hose pipe insulates reasonably well, but more lagging is more effective, yes.
@@OpenSourceLowTech thanks ! I'll try it for my 90m3 off grid space
does the water go bad, giving smelly air, after a while?
I have a question, if yall have a second to answer it .
Would this design work in more temperate, less arid climates?
I understand that evaporative cooling systems like this dont work so well in humid climates, though im wondering if somehow because of the geothermal effect, that gets accounted for.
This isn't an evaporative process, in fact it would be an issue if the water did gas off over time.
The cooling effect is just from transferring the ground temperature to the water, as in most locations it should be cooler than summer days and warmer than winter nights.
Saw this today in my sub list, im belled
Im subscribed and saw the thumbnail in
my feed
THANKS! Any thoughts for SW FL, USA???
Should more or less work in much the same way. Might get some level of dehumidification as well, tho still need to properly test this.
Does anyone suppose this device might pump the cooler air high enough that it could enter the structure at a height of about 5' rather than at floor level? If so, it would be more effective since the air inside the interior cabin would naturally fall downward? It's my whole body I'd want to cool off, not just my feet.
brilliant!
Maybe the AI knows to promote your channel when it detects "testing if my channel is broken" in the video title
Heh, maybe, tho this is the third time I've uploaded it seeing if things are still broken.
Yeah, nice pump btw
Seems like it will raise humidity in the space, create a mold hazard, and if it warms enough, create a legionella hazard
Two things; ! Just allow convection to do all the work for free. 2. No need to cool a body of water when the cool ground is all you need. But, yes, looks like you had some fun with this one.
A thermosiphon could potentially have been useful here, but unfortunately the ground is the cold bit, so a convection loop won't occur.
Maybe if it was used for warming in winter, but there's better ways of doing that.
Do you have temperature measurements of the inlet and outlet of the machine?
Thank you
I got some provisional data from the initial testing a while back, basically after eight hours straight of pumping 55C air in (heated by the vacuum cleaner pump I was using as a prototype) it didn't come up by more than half a degree above the local ground temp of 23.5C, and that was in a fairly non ideal situation of dry sand at less than a meter depth.
I really need to get back to this tech tho and flesh it out properly..
in my subscription list.. Good video.. love simpel technology, so we can live independently of government
I agree with the sentiment but I don’t think that simple tech is the solution to living independent of government, it’s good for living independent of energy companies, water companies, that sort of stuff but the simple tech is not gonna stop the government collecting your bins ever week haha.
@@anguskeenan4932 You have to start somewhere
What happens with the water. Does it get stale how do you change it out
I looked into various options, best one seems to be just saturate with table salt. Doesn't gas off, non toxic, cheap, and nothing should survive in it.
@@OpenSourceLowTech collodial silver would be an option with distilled water
Thought about it, and copper. Salt's easier and probably a bit more broad spectrum.
Can't hear you. What happened did it work.? He doesn't show results?
Relevant info in the pinned comment.
Im a little confused on how the valves work
How well did it work? It was over as it started to operate.
Really cool project 😆
So what is the temperature difference in and out???????????????????????
Got a notification, thanks!
So the returning air is at a much higher humidity due to passing thru the water in the jug. I doubt this would provide much BTU cooling hence the need to place directly under and against a tree for shade. The principle is fairly good but the execution leaves something to be desired.
desert ground is not 55 degrees at 1 meter, it's more like 75 degrees. Ground temperature is only lower than 60 degrees if it's wet due to evaporative cooling effect. It gets to about 65 degrees down 50 feet deep... good DIY project though...
Nice! I have a geo cooler for my dense urban greenhouse of 42 sq/ft. Car alarm floor that is my version of urban LOL!
Who is that walking around supervising? 4:27